Looks like you are a new visitor to this site. Hello!
Welcome to Hope For Film! Come participate in the discussion, and I encourage you to enter your email address in the sidebar and subscribe. It's free! And easy! If you have any suggestions on how to improve this website or suggestions for topics please don't hesitate to write in to any of the blogs.
You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook.
(If you keep getting this message, you probably have cookies turned off.)
The post I did on “The Really Bad Things In The Indie Film Biz 2012” has generated a lot of health conversations. The wise recognize that each of these really bad things is just an opportunity to make this all better — and sometimes to make some money. The post has been shared and “liked” more that usual for this blog and I think that speaks well of our collective endeavor to rescue indie film.
I particularly liked all the comments the blog generated, and have done my best to reply to them. Thanks for the participation!
I want to single out one comment in particular from Jb Bruno, who kindly has allowed me to repost it here:
Maybe one way to break the hold the people at the top have on the artists is to change the model, as it’s a model that serves them but not even one an audience really wants.
Movie-going in its infancy was about [...]
By Kellie Ann Benz
Okay, I’ll admit it. I think ‘Jersey Shore’ offered some of the best life lessons. I’m not too cool to reveal that I gleaned much from the leg-humping silverbacks who F-bombed their way into obscurity on that cautionary tale of a show.
Replace, if you will, their onenightstandpad with a film festival party, and you can see how they offered all of us a first rate how-NOT-to for which should be grateful.
I cite their example as a sobering reminder for everyone packing for their first film festival.
First, the good news. Film festivals are wicked wild fun. Truly.
Festival attendees are some of the most electric creatives you’ll ever meet – and when actors or actresses are in attendance, some of the most beautiful humans you’ll ever see with your own eyeballs – film festivals offer a throwback to Dominick Dunne-esque invitation only cocktail parties. At the best international festivals, the ribald wits congregate as safe harbour from a cruel, cruel world that only understands their stories when told in a linear three act structure. At the discovery-zone of regional indie festivals, you can feel welcomed into an exclusive club where only the cinematic smarty-pants go.
For the chosen ones with films competing, a film festival is [...]
by Emily Best & Liam Brady
EMILY: Recently I was a guest on an awesome show that brings together musicians, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs to talk, play, and pontificate. Here’s the first question we were asked: we all know how much technology has helped music and film, but what about the challenges it poses?
There’s no doubt in my mind that the greatest challenge technology poses to the arts is fragmentation. In a world where the audience’s attention is so divided, how do you make something stand out? [...]
Cinema is dead, no one goes to the movies, film is dead, who actually goes to the movies, they don’t make ‘em like they used to, there’s nothing new under the sun—my gosh, don’t you just WRETCH at the thought of these phrases, either in a hundred and forty characters or time-wasting think pieces or overheard on BART or anywhere else under the sun. Here’s the secret—and I’m preaching to the choir here—American independent cinema is going through an amazing renaissance at the moment. Really! It’s just ACCESS to these movies that’s the problem, but I’m getting ahead of myself.It’s easier than ever to make a movie. You, dear reader, could conceivably [...]
By Greg Pak
I came up through independent film. Then I snagged a meeting with Marvel and spent most of the last eight years writing comic books. Now I’ve just completed an iPad app version of one of my graphic novels that combines elements of both comics and film. Here are a few thoughts about what inspired me as a filmmaker and comic book writer to plunge into the transmedia world of the “Vision Machine” app project and what I’ve learned.
Why “Vision Machine”?
A few years ago, Orlando Bagwell of the Ford Foundation approached me with the idea of creating a comic book that would help independent media makers imagine the technological, political, and social changes that will affect us over the next fifty years. As an indie filmmaker, sci fi guy, technology freak, and comic book creator, I was immediately hooked. What resulted was a 80 page sci fi thriller that follows three filmmaker friends as they confront the incredible potential and danger of the iEye, Sprout Computers’ latest piece of revolutionary personal technology. The iEye allows users to instantly record anything they can see or imagine, then edit, add special effects, and share it with the world just by thinking about it. Our heroes plunge into a mind-blowing utopia of creativity… and then, of course, the other shoe drops.
With its emphasis on copyright, trademark, privacy, and surveillance, “Vision Machine” let me explore questions that I’m always thinking about as a filmmaker and a citizen of the digital world.
And then ITVS came along and let me take the project to a whole new level. [...]
By Reid Rosefelt
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
I love Facebook but there is one thing that really irks me fierce, and that’s when a guy with a name like Axylsmpgo Phpnygusx “Big Pimpin” Pxtzchqo and a profile picture of Vera Farmiga likes my page. Who makes mysterious comments like like “axkcfierj;kfdjrpeirka;dfuernxitrh.” I suppose that there are those who get satisfaction out of correspondence of this nature, but alas, I am not one of them.
Please help me get these counterfeit likers off my fan page. All you need to do is give me a button so I can zap away the profiles of people who aren’t real. For example, if I have 1083 and one of those phantoms tries to make it 1084 I click and then I’m back to good old 1083 again. That would give me more satisfaction than you can imagine. [...]
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
